What is causing transparent space around an image, in a PDF, to be printed as white when a proof is produced? Looks fine on screen and when printed on standard printers, just shows up when a proof is produced from digital press printer

Background image (PSD), image laid on top to the right (tiff), logo (PSD) laid on top, to the bottom left (this is the problem file), with a text layer.

In answer to Steve, a screen capture would be pointless as it only shows up when the print shop runs off a proof. Printing via a home colour laser jet or Toshiba (one of the big colour copier jobs0 or a bog standard mon laserjet shows no problem. I did try exporting the page as EPS and was told that the logo was dropped out.

I was wondering that. No I don't have to use them, just used them by default as he does the printing for my place of work. I will look around and try some other places I think. The EPS issue made more suspicious. Many thanks.

I had tried PDF/X-1a, but if not a default setting then I didn't touch that option. I have read on the web that using the 'High Quality Print' preset would work. I may try that as I used that setting for work stuff and never had any problems. I don't know if it was a typo, but I used 'Press Quality' for this job and tried 'PDF/X-1a afterwards.

Both Press Quality and High Quality Print leave the transparency live in your PDF, and I think that's where things are breaking down -- that the printer doesn't have the capability, or knowledge required, maybe, for handling a PDF with transparency. If you change the compatibility to Acrobat 4 the transparency is flattened. The high Quality Print preset leaves all colors unchanged, whcih is fine for digital output, but for a printing press it may not be a good idea unless the printer's RIP handles the color conversions from RGB properly. Press Quality converts to CMYK + spots.

PDF/X-1a sets the comaptibilty to Acrobat 4 and converts all of the colors to CMYK + Spot, but I see it does not allow for setting the simulate overprint box. In this case I don't think that's a problem, but you could start with that preset, and change the Standard dropdown to None, then set the simulate overprint if you like.

That depends. The printer I use for most color work has a web application that allows the client to view the RIP-processed data before they print their Epson proofs and it allows me to check for overprints, trapping, and color mixes. I don't think this is the norm, however.

The image you posted was the PDF you gave, them, yes? I don't see a white box in that, so the problem lies in the processing of that PDF to get to the proof.

I think the best hope with this printer is a flattened PDF so they don't have to do the transparency flattening themselves. If that doesn't produce an acceptable proof take a walk. There are still plenty of printers that can do this kind of work without a problem.

It's not a white box, rather an thin white outline that goes around entire image. With a layered image that was cutout of white, unless you go well within the image to remove white, a thin amount of white can exist between the image and the transparent area. And this white area previewed in Acrobat (due to Acrobat resolution) will appear a lot larger than it is. In Acrobat, if you zoom in, do you still see white outline?

There is no white line around the image it's an outer glow. The white infill can't be seen in the PDF or the image above, but when a proof is printed off by the digital printer at the Printers it has a white infill

OK then it is the printed proof, with the PDF screen capture you provided, I thought the glow was the issue. This sounds like (as everyone has mentioned) an issue with your service provider's DFE/RIP. Is this happening on just this image? If so, I would take out all of the transparency potentials, and make one composite image with logo and background combined.